Healthcare Professionals: Empathy vs. Sympathy

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Empathy is the ability to understand and accept another person’s reality, to accurately perceive feelings, and to communicate your understanding with the other party involved. Empathy is also the cornerstone of any healthcare profession.

Empathizing not not only in the medical field is a must but also to different sectors of other profession. Being in the healthcare profession most especially us nurses who tend to be the first line of defense to our patients, frequent interpersonal skills are being practiced in different circumstances. Unlike other professions, we have the highest opportunity to handle and speak to people. Others maybe appreciative, problematic most of the time, stressed, depressed, happy, complainants most of t...

Empathy does play a vital role in nurse/doctor or other healthcare professionals and patient relationship. I think all of you have already pointed out the fine line between empathy and sympathy. I guess being empathetic comes naturally to those who are sincerely caring or sincerely listening to their patients feelings or concerns. If we truly care, I don't see having any problems with empathizing with the patient/ their families instead of sympathizing. So, I would like to say "Kudos&qu...

The difference between empathy and sympathy and the impact of it on the patients and caretakers is quite noticeable. Patients who have had chronic illnesses, have heard "I feel sorry for you" and it doesn't really make a difference, either emotionally or physically. But when someone gets down to their situation and tries to understand the pain and suffering they go through, patients do realize very quickly that person is not like the rest. I experience this quite frequently. When p...

Empathetic communication with patients is very important in daily clinical medicine, so that the patients can be connected and trusted the treating physician. It is an important art of medicine, that might be forgotten by some in the era of hectic busy job in hospital. We must always treat patient as a person, not an illness or disease entity, and we must always remember that he/she has a “feeling”. We need to practice the holistic approach, by fixing their medical condition, as well as taking c...

Empathy is important for all healthcare professionals because many patients do not know how to deal with their problems--big or small. You cannot limit your view of patients to their charts and their specific cases, because with every patient suffering from a single disease, the needs will be different. Empathy allows us to go over and beyond what our professional duties dictate of us. And most importantly, it helps us provide a level of care that is more valuable and more meaningful to the pati...

Empathy is an integral part on how you deal with a patient or with your fellow man in general. This was taught to us in nursing school as well as in medical school. Sympathy is just plain. It is you telling another that you feel sorry for them and that's it. A barrier remains between people with sympathy as empathy takes that extra step and breaks down that barrier by saying "I am sorry, I understand, I am here, how can I help you?" Integrating empathy in the way you deal with othe...

The job of any physician is part empathic and part problem solving. This constitutes an inherent trade-off in medicine because the human brain does not have infinite computational resources or time to perform both tasks equally well. One must be caring while also figuring out a proper diagnosis, prognosis and treatment, often under conditions of uncertainty.ust as only using one’s cognitive problem-solving skills would not necessarily lead to the best outcomes for patients, only employing one’s ...

Empathy need not be awkward nor emotionally exhausting; unlike sympathy, empathy does not require emotional effort on the part of the provider. An appropriate statement or gesture of empathy takes only a moment and can go a long way to enhance rapport, build positive relationships, and even improve difficult ones. Studies have shown that when opportunities for empathy were repeatedly missed, visits tended to be longer and more frustrating for both physician and patient. Conversely, empathy may s...